In every violent act there is a moment when the entire thing could have been prevented. The challenge is knowing when that moment is, exactly. Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a game that swims in the murky uncertainty between violence and negotiation. The game is set 25 years before the original and tells the story of a security agent for a biochemical augmentation firm drawn into a conspiracy that will undoubtedly explain the origins of the nanotechnology augmentation at the heart of the first game.

In most scenarios, you'll have the freedom to choose between stealth, persuasion, or violent confrontation. If you choose to go gun-first into a mission, you'll face a long and punishing fight that you may be incapable of surviving. The choice to address a situation with violence requires serious forethought, observation, and consideration of your current equipment. For a brief few seconds before you pull the trigger to begin your attack, there's a quiet sublimity that falls over everything, letting you take in the mundane details of how things were right before the peaceful order was intruded on by your dumb and angry guns.

I imagine the rock is the mother of all violent instruments. It requires no added science or technology, only the animating hand of a human with an inclination to hear a loud noise or see something break. I suspect this is why the strongest impulse one has when holding a rock is to throw it. Nintendo's Wii Play: Motion featured a game about nothing more than throwing rocks. The goal is to see how far you can skip a rock across the surface of a lake, which offers a great number of potential outcomes depending on the angle and velocity of your throw.

It's the kind of Wii game that's made a certain type of player groan over the last several years, disdaining the possibility that something so simple could hold a person's attention. Presumptions aside, Wii Play: Motion's stone-throwing game is captivating, playing on the heightened focus we can apply to a violent act. If it seems perhaps pointless in the larger scheme of things, that only points to our hunger to see violence escalated. If there was a real target for each stone throw, an animal, say, or another human--that might really be something. Absent victims, the action itself remains strangely satisfying, driving an instinct for more force and accuracy just on the off chance that there might someday be something to aim for.

Video games are sometimes described as cinematic, but it's not always clear what this is supposed to mean. Are cinematic games supposed to have lots of cutscenes? Are they filled with reams of dialogue and maze-like plots? When I use "cinematic," I mean only to say an individual act is given as much context (or coverage, as you'd say on set) as possible. By this definition Ninja Gaiden 3 is a cinematic extravaganza, regularly slowing down time to show you just what it was you made happen when you tapped the X button to send a sword slicing into another human's neck or torso.

There's been no shortage of games that spatter the screen with blood and severed limbs in recent years, but few have matched Ninja Gaiden 3's regular insistence on slowing the action down to observe the close-up details of the otherwise abstract combo-chains. What appears like violent slapstick from afar is more unsettling in slow motion with a zoomed-in camera. It's hard not to wonder what happens a step or two past the point of impact. Just how quickly does a sharp sword cut through bone? Does the victim immediately go into a traumatic state of blackout? Or are they conscious until the moment of bleedout? Ninja Gaiden 3 is a step forward in the cause of considering acts of violent extremity not just as point multipliers and cinematic finishers, but as dramatic actions that have emotional and physical consequences.

Did you see or read about any uniquely games that stood out to you at this year's E3? Let us know in the comments below!